


Hero?

by Fiorenza_a



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 03:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3193589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiorenza_a/pseuds/Fiorenza_a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difference?...He didn't enjoy the killing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero?

 

The difference?

He didn't enjoy the killing.

Doyle watched him as he swilled down the last of his pint and got up, nudging Doyle's shoulder in a gesture of farewell and kinship, and headed out of the pub and into the clear frosty night.

Doyle could have followed, perhaps someone else would have. Bodie was never okay alone. He would go home, there'd be scotch, a habit picked up from Cowley, or rum, a habit picked up at sea, or brandy, or maybe vodka, or gin, habits picked up elsewhere in the incoherent hinterland of Bodie's history. Something to blot out the day, remove reality, bring forth sleep.

Not that the stupid bugger would sleep.

He'd 'phone sometime in the wee small hours, ask if Doyle was awake. Smirk at his own discomfiture over an open radio, Cowley's amused acerbic teasing. Make glibly inappropriate observations about the job, about living and about dying.

He wouldn't say that he'd tried to sleep. That the old, familiar demons had risen to torment him, that the light was on, that the shadows were full of terrors.

Doyle would listen, contribute his own irreverent tuppence ha'penny's worth, suggest Bodie picked him up in the morning, specified time, so he'd know to go hunting for the silly sod if he didn't turn up. Bodie would know that too, that he wasn't adrift, that he was tethered. That there was still slack in the rope, but no longer enough to hang himself with.

Someone else might have offered to go round, talk him through the night, watch him as he needed watching. Someone else, who didn't understand Bodie's peculiar brand of claustrophobia. Someone who didn't have his trust, who might spook him, unnerve him into bolting, let him slip through their fingers, losing him to the darkness.

But Doyle would swallow his misgivings, put down the receiver, and allow Bodie to struggle through the night as he needed to; alone.

It was always a risk. The man had never learned to ask for help when he needed it. Or perhaps he'd learned too well not to. No amount of frustrated cajoling or outraged hectoring had ever taught him otherwise. Except this, except the 'phone call. This umbilical cord of meaningless chatter. This need to make sure Doyle was still there.

It was reassurance, of a sort, that even if one day he missed the silent need in Bodie, this desire to keep him near would avert disaster.

Doyle returned Bodie's goodbye, the stoically flippant injunction to sweet dreams, and turned off the light beside his bed, knowing Bodie would do the same, facing the shadows with the same unthinking courage with which he faced all his enemies.

Their enemies.

Bodie's demons, sleep conjured and real, were his now. As his had become Bodie's. And perhaps  _ that _ was the difference. The talisman which saved them from the seductive insanity of bloodletting, that they sheltered each other from the maelstrom of butchery. That each held a lantern for the other, safe harbour from the tempest raging about them.

So that one day they could lay down their weapons, in the knowledge that they had done their duty, and bask in the peace of sunlit uplands, perfumed with the archaic scents of lavender and rose petals.

 

 

END


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